Just getting back from the Web Content Management conference in Chicago this week.  The Conference was put together by Duo Consulting and focused this year on “Going Mobile.” Aside from being hideously hot in Chicago it was great to be immersed in all things content for the better part of two days

The conference was essentially sold out, filling a large seminar classroom in the Gleacher Center on the University of Chicago Booth School of Business campus. (One bonus of the classroom setting: plenty of power outlets!) It was attended by content strategists, web marketing folks, consultants, writers and agency types—and a large-ish contingent from various parts of Canada. A few of the web content strategy world’s “glitterati” were on the agenda as well, giving the event a blue ribbon seal of approval.

You can view the slides from the event here and videos are forthcoming shortly. The twitter stream using #wccon also does a good job of teasing out good links, references and quotes capturing the key points that resonated with the audience. Scott Markle from Autotrader (a Percussion customer) was one of the few end-user presentations, but the others were long on practical advice which provided a good balance.

As it relates specifically to content management, I had the following three observations.

Don’t think of content as a page any more
This theme came up a few times in relationship to preparing for mobile and scaling content contributors. The faster you can break your organization from thinking about content in terms of its end usage, the easier it will be to create compelling content that can be reused in multiple channels.

Do mobile, do it now, but do it smartly
The good news is that very few people have the mobile-thing figured out yet. The examples of how to do it wrong are plentiful, which makes it difficult to plan for how to do it right. However, the speakers were unanimous on the following: be sure to think of the context for how YOUR users will interact with your mobile experience, and design your strategy accordingly. Test often as well because what you think may not in fact be reality.   

Content Strategy is critical
Given that this was a conference essentially about Content Strategy, it’s no surprise then that this would be high on the list of takeaways. But the case was made strongly that even if you don’t have a formal Content Strategy, or a Content Strategist, take steps to get there. With a strong strategy in place, it can help set priorities for how to do things like mobile, or social, or whatever gets thrown your way next.

And it’s that “what’s next” issue that becomes an underlying theme in virtually every discussion. At Percussion we have taken to calling it the “web rate of change.” Keeping up is no longer about having the latest and greatest, it’s about having the organizational, operational, and technological flexibility to react to whatever comes next.

In that context, the three points above—free content from “pages,” do mobile smartly, and develop a content strategy—ensure that organizations have that required flexibility and can be successful in a highly changeable environment.

Fast on the heals on our learning of the MITX Finalist Award for CM1, late last week Percussion’s CM System platform was named a Stevie Awards Finalist. The category this time is Best New Software Product released in the last year. 

CM System, Percussion’s flagship web content management platform, powers a number of very sophisticated web sites from Autorader.com to Vegas.com, universities such as Virginia Tech, and government agencies such as the SEC.gov, USA.gov and cancer.gov. CM System’s architecture is uniquely designed to allow organizations to maintain their existing delivery tier applications without requiring those applications to be completely rebuilt.  

Considering the time and money that weather.com had invested in their redesign, this “decoupled architecture” was a critical factor in the decision to select and deploy CM System.  You can watch a short video from weather.com here describing this decision and value driver.

We are pleased that our web content management platforms continue to be recognized for high quality engineering, innovative User Experiences, and the platform’s role in solving our customers’ most complex web site challenges.

We are looking forward to the announcement of the winners in New York on June 20th!